4 ms·

>The ads were just plain awesome. Case in point: This 1981 ad featuring a young girl with her Lego creation. That picture of the girl holding up a lego set is

>The ads were just plain awesome. Case in point: This 1981 ad featuring a young girl with her Lego creation. That picture of the girl holding up a lego set is only "AWESOME" for parents. As a kid if I saw that I would barf. First off as a little boy back then... there was no gender equality. All girls were stupid and had cooties and I was a little sexist tyrant. Second little boys aren't dumb... that blob of a thing made by girl is infinitely less interesting then a space ship designed by a professional adult with a cool color scheme. Case in point I loved the M-tron series: https://imgur.com/a/bK7w8 https://imgur.com/a/bK7w8. Of course being a little boy my skills were only good enough to produce that multi colored blob but that doesn't change the fact that I knew what quality was when I saw it. This article is just an adult projecting his opinion and woke sensibilities onto a kid. That being said yes it's ok for a boy to like doll houses. Perfectly fine, but let's be real, legos are mostly for boys and most boys would prefer dinosaurs over doll houses and any advertising that doesn't target that is advertising that doesn't understand the majority of its target demographic. My main argument is against the author of the article and their complete blissful ignorance about how kids think. Lego knew their shit though. That photo is an ad targetted towards parents. The M-tron legos had advertising targeted directly towards me when I was a kid, while this article on the other hand is an article targeting parents who don't understand how kids think.

destitude 5y ago
I think you are missing the point.. The gender equality was portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls. Today you have marketing pre-disposing parents to thinking girls should follow X interests and boys Y. This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not rocket ships.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  >The gender equality was portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls. I know. Legos has two modes of advertising. One targeting parents, the other targeting kids. Both were accurate in their objectives. However the article itself fails to understand the psychology of kids. > This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not rocket ships. Don't want to turn it into a huge debate about gender stuff. All I can say is I disagree. Male and female preferences influence the advertising and the advertising in turn does influence preference but to a much lesser degree. Many studies show that the interest is innate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox You can disagree, but there's no point in turning this into a debate... let's just agree that there's controversy around this area and definitely a lot of interest groups seek to color this area with their own agendas.
  - destitude 5y ago
    It's still interesting to note that boys wore pink and played with dolls in the USA 100-150 years ago.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      You can build dolls with legos. It is the act of building that is really the core that draws this line of demarcation IMO. Other stuff like whether pink is associated with masculinity is harder to judge. Additionally don't forget practically all of our technology and science from the dawn of human kind (with many exceptions) was built from the ground up by males. That is the key, despite the exceptions, men are basically responsible for all of it. It seems illogical to dismiss the difference with a simple answer like sexism. It may be that males in the past didn't permit women to enter STEM and that is WRONG. But there's also the fact that males built all of STEM and no parallel structure was built on the female side; that difference is worth exploring as is your remark about boys wearing pink and playing with dolls.

destitude 5y ago

I think you are missing the point.. The gender equality was portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls. Today you have marketing pre-disposing parents to thinking girls should follow X interests and boys Y. This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not rocket ships.

deltaonefour 5y ago
>The gender equality was portrayed by the company and therefore picked up by the parents. Nothing to do with what little boys thought of girls. I know. Legos has two modes of advertising. One targeting parents, the other targeting kids. Both were accurate in their objectives. However the article itself fails to understand the psychology of kids. > This is big part of why we have lack of females in STEM since for example "girls" Legos shows they should just worry about beauty salons and not rocket ships. Don't want to turn it into a huge debate about gender stuff. All I can say is I disagree. Male and female preferences influence the advertising and the advertising in turn does influence preference but to a much lesser degree. Many studies show that the interest is innate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox You can disagree, but there's no point in turning this into a debate... let's just agree that there's controversy around this area and definitely a lot of interest groups seek to color this area with their own agendas.
- destitude 5y ago
  It's still interesting to note that boys wore pink and played with dolls in the USA 100-150 years ago.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    You can build dolls with legos. It is the act of building that is really the core that draws this line of demarcation IMO. Other stuff like whether pink is associated with masculinity is harder to judge. Additionally don't forget practically all of our technology and science from the dawn of human kind (with many exceptions) was built from the ground up by males. That is the key, despite the exceptions, men are basically responsible for all of it. It seems illogical to dismiss the difference with a simple answer like sexism. It may be that males in the past didn't permit women to enter STEM and that is WRONG. But there's also the fact that males built all of STEM and no parallel structure was built on the female side; that difference is worth exploring as is your remark about boys wearing pink and playing with dolls.